RIMES, a provider of managed data services for the buy-side, has launched RegFocus, a buy-side monitoring and detection solution for the Market Abuse Regulation (MAR).
RegFocus is designed to meet regulatory obligations under MAR and many other surveillance regulations, reducing buy-side firms’ risk of insider dealing and market manipulation.
MAR, which came into force in July, greatly increases the compliance burden and associated costs for asset management firms. Firms can no longer rely on the control provided by their brokers and must instead operate compliance policies to identify and control market abuse.
RegFocus uses algorithms and analytics to deliver buy-side compliance teams a comprehensive review of all trading activity. It monitors and detects behaviour across multiple exchanges and asset classes, including ETFs, benchmarks, indices and portfolio rebalancing activities.
With RIMES’ new fully-managed solution, compliance officers are given an overarching view of all MAR regulatory obligations .
RIMES has appointed Jeremy Garland as head of compliance to lead the RegFocus team. Garland brings nearly 20 years’ compliance experience, most recently as global head of monitoring and surveillance at Macquarie Group. He has also held senior compliance positions at Nomura and Merill Lynch.
Garland reports to Bruno Piers de Raveschoot (pictured), chief operating officer of RIMES’ compliance division.
“RegFocus is the first, fully managed and hosted MAR solution that has been developed specifically for the buy-side. It has been built by compliance officers, for compliance officers as we acutely understand the current and future regulatory pressures they face. RIMES’ library of powerful detection models ensures that firms can keep pace with regulatory and technology change, supporting their investment activity with a broad-coverage compliance solution,” says Garland.
“Fund management firms are facing very specific issues with the new MAR EU 596/2014. The complexity of the data and the entity level for monitoring is very different than for the sell-side, and the reasons for market abuse are not the same. The way portfolio managers are measured impacts the risk of manipulation. A typical sell-side solution will not apply for that industry, which is why we developed a solution specifically for the buy-side,” says de Raveschoot.
